Viva Lewes Issue #161 February 2020

ON THIS MONTH: ART
David Hockney, ‘Self Portrait’, 1954 © David Hockney
Photo: Richard Schmidt. Collection Bradford Museums & Galleries, Bradford, UK
David Hockney, ‘We Two Boys Together Clinging’, 1961 © David Hockney
Photo: Prudence Cuming Associates. Collection Arts Council, Southbank Centre
poet Walt Whitman.”
Neither artist, as I glean from
a quick viewing of some of the
images that will be on show,
were afraid to make frequent
sexual references in their work.
And both are fond of inserting
figures and letters into their
paintings. In Hockney’s case,
numbers were an obscure code
for letters of the alphabet: thus
in the 1961 painting We 2 Boys
Clinging Together, the figure
‘4.2’, I learn, represents the
letters ‘C’ and ‘R’, standing for
Cliff Richard, who Hockney
had a crush on at the time.
The exhibition was shown
at the Hepworth Gallery in
Wakefield over the winter
(2020 marking the 100th anniversary
of Davie’s birth); the
Towner have a Davie painting
in their permanent collection,
and lent it to the Yorkshire
gallery. When the opportunity
to house the exhibition arose,
they jumped at it, “to give the
Towner audience the chance
to see the early work of these
two major figures of post-war
British painting.” Hockney, I
imagine, will be a particular
draw.
The surviving artist, I’m told,
(Davie died in 2014) was consulted
in the curating process
of the original exhibition at the
Hepworth, but didn’t go and
see it there. So is Britain’s most
famous living artist likely to
turn up at the Towner? “Would
he swap sunny California for
rainy Eastbourne in February?”,
smiles Sara. “Still, he
has been known to pitch up
unannounced at exhibitions of
his work, so you never know.”
Alex Leith
Towner Eastbourne, 15th
Feb-31st May, £5-£11, free to
members. townereastbourne.
org.uk
Alan Davie, ‘Crazy Gondolier’, 1960
43